Justice League Unlimited
Summary The Justice League Unlimited (JLU) is a group in Second Life founded by Second Life residents "Kalel Venkman" and "Kara Timtam" on April 4th, 2006. The group was made with the intent to be a peace-keeper and Anti-griefer organization. The group is notable for their use of comic book hero appearances such as Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern and for being one of the few Anti-griefer groups to operate a members-only information wiki. The Justice League is currently head-quartered in the JLU-members-only sims: Justice Island and Hero Island but have sites open to the public in various other locations, most noteably its "Adventurers Club" in Steelhead Port Harbor. It has also been resident of the sims: Isere, Verbier, and Asimov Island. The Justice League Unlimited group logo was designed for the group by resident and ex-JLU member Netwonder Widget as a tribute to the official Justice League of America logohttp://www.jimairdo.com/dotnetnuke/Portals/0/jla_logo.gif Activities The Justice League Unlimited primarily patrols Second Life sandboxes and other public areas searching for violations of the Second Life Terms of Service to file Abuse Reports to Linden Lab for. In addition to this, the Justice League Unlimited has been known to assist new Second Life residents, host estate manager security seminars, operate as security for resident-run events, and assist charity in Second Life through events such as Relay for Life, Earth Week, Peace Week, Imagine Fest, and the Spina Bifida Awareness Foundation. The Justice League Unlimited also owns and operates Krypton Radio: an internet radio station and Justice League Unlimited news blog which it finances without the support of advertisements. Brainiac and the BrainiacWiki The Justice League Unlimited is unique among the anti-griefer groups in SL largely due to their extensive use of an information storage and retrieval system called "Brainiac", named after the Superman villain by the same name, and for its equally extensive "BrainiacWiki". Brainiac and the BrainaicWiki are only accessible by Justice League Unlimited members, and are used for the purpose of storing information on suspected griefers, griefer groups, JLU friendly contacts, JLU friendly groups, chat logs, JLU meeting logs, and people and groups of interest to the JLU. Use of these tools by the League are the usual focus of the League's detractors, as they are seen as a violation of personal privacy. Controversies The Justice League Unlimited has been subject to a number of controversies since its founding in 2006, largely centered around the JLU's information gathering for use in the members-only BrainiacWiki, and its interactive Brainiac database. Claims of Linden favoritism continue to swirl around the organization, some of it seemingly confirmed by information gleaned from the pages of the leaked BrainiacWiki on two noteworthy occasions: *In 2007, a person or persons unknown exploited a bug in IE6 which allowed them to view pages from the BrainiacWiki. Approximately 170 pages were copied, comprising a small amount of the total wiki. The information thus obtained was leaked to a Second Life news blog called the Alphaville Herald (formally Second Life Herald). Some Residents believed that the Justice League Unlimited's wiki was being used to spy on residents and could be considered an invasion of privacy. This was compounded when it was discovered that the Justice League Unlimited had been keeping real life information as well as Second Life information on some suspected griefers. *In 2010, the group known as "The Wrong Hands" infiltrated the Justice League Unlimited using the account Haruhi Thespian, Haruhi was accepted as a member of the Justice League Unlimited and granted access to the Brainiac Wiki, they later downloaded most of it. Another TWH member later posted it on a number of file sharing sites and to the torrent search engine Pirate Bay. Justice League Unlimited leader Kalel Venkman responded by filing DMCA take down to the file sharing sites, demanding the wiki be taken down. Most file sharing sites complied, but by the time the wiki was removed, it had already been distributed to numerous sources. The Alphaville Herald covered the wiki leak extensively and used portions of the wiki in a series of stories, sometimes publishing articles comprised entirely of stolen material. This resulted in a DMCA take down request being sent to TypePad, their blog host at the time. The offending material was removed. The Herald filed a counter-claim, questioning the validity of the JLU's copyright to public Second Life resident information and chat logs as well as calling it "fair use" for the sake of journalism. The materials were restored three weeks later. The question of the legality of both the League's action regarding the use of the DMCA and the Herald's response was never resolved by the courts, and no further action was taken against the Herald despite successful takedowns elsewhere. The Justice League Unlimited has also been criticized for it's use of copyrighted and trademarked DC and Marvel Comic Book characters and names without authorization. However, the respective owners of the intellectual property used by the Justice League Unlimited have made no comments or requests to cease and desist on the usage.